Started w/ El Diente from Navajo Basin, traversed to Mt. Wilson, then traversed in talus below Gladstone up to Gladstone-Wilson Peak saddle and then on to Wilson Peak. Descended and left camp. 15 hr day camp to TH

soloed the south buttress from kilpacker basin. it's a class 5.0-5.2 route going through some questionable rock. being early in the season with no one for miles, just throw the bad rock aside and keep going. a scary yet exhilirating route! do this one.

The ridge traverse IS a classic, but not as difficult as I imagined. The downclimbs and scrambles are exiting and the exposure along parts of the ridge are exhilarating (or terrifying to some, probably)!!! The traverse took three hours. On the descent, We scrambled down rocks to reach the main snow couloir and found the top of the snow to be thin (18" over rock) and I took a nasty fall, despite my crampons and axe. After immediately attemping self-arrest, which only slowed my progress on the 55 degree slope, due to the rotten snow conditions, I flipped onto my back when my crampons caught a rock hidding under the shallow snow. Immediately I returned into the arrest positon, finally coming to a stop after a 100 foot slide (and only ten feet above a ten foot drop onto rocks. Fortunately, my quick reactions and equipment prevented any injuries other than scraped knuckles and some soreness.

My partner carefully downclimbed this section w/o incident, although he was shaken to watch my accident. Because of the steepness and soft snow, we downclimbed rock ribs until the slope angle eased back to about 35-40 degrees, where we tested the snow, and began glissading to the bottom, carefully avoiding and rock outcrops below. I finally hobbled into camp 13 hours after our day began.

The moral of the story is: 1)wear a helmet (like I did), 2) have an axe and crampons and know how to used them (it could save your life), 3) climb these with partners, and 4) do not take them lightly...they are difficult climbs with dangerous potential, even if the weather is perfect.

Climbed the steep, snow-filled gullies and ribs up and down the north slope, following a partial descent from Mount Wilson to about 13,000'. This was a miserable route, and my most difficult climb in the Colorado Rockies to date. Made for an extremely long day, with the latter part being done in a cold rain.

Wow, what a mountain! We backpacked into Navajo Lake and thought it wouldn't be a long day up El Diente from there. But the monsoons started building around 8:00 AM (!), the rocks were covered with a thin glaze of ice in places, and one of the guys in our party was feeling pretty sick. However, we got up to the top after all of that thanks to an early start and some luck with the storms barely missing us as we were descending down the couloir. Don't take this mountain lightly at all!

Camped below the route on Sat...started up at 5:00a.m. and caught a beautiful sunrise half way up. We followed the couloir most of the way by climbing the rock on either side and then took a direct path up to the summit. Continued on the ridge traverse to Wilson after that.

This was the most amazing, challenging and rewarding route I've done to date on a 14er. We started the day from our Navajo Lake campsite. Gaining the ridge was extremely difficult as we were climbing rock that was very loose and inbetween talus and scree in size. On several occasions I would step up and the rock would slide causing me to only move a short distance with each step. Once on the ridge the climb became very exciting with sections of extreme exposure yet solid rock that made these sections very comfortable to climb. Gerry Roach says routefinding is key on this route. Well we must've gotten lucky because the route seemed pretty straight forward. Next task traverse to Mount Wilson :)

A late summer freeze cemented the scree on the north face solid, so we had no problems with the infamous rockfall. Still, wear a helmet. Traversed to Mount Wilson. Another group on the mountain had a miserable + dangerous descent of this route - be careful.